Movie #2 of 2023: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) Perhaps inevitably, this sequel is not as strong as its rather extraordinary 2018 predecessor. But it nears that level of quality at times, and might well be the best possible follow-up given the awful loss of original star Chadwick Boseman to colon cancer in the intervening …
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Movie #1 of 2023: The Bob’s Burgers Movie (2022) This seemingly-unnecessary feature film installment for the long-running Fox cartoon turns out to be a delightful surprise, especially coming after several seasons of television that haven’t struck me as all too creatively fruitful. Perhaps the production team’s attention was on this project instead? Whatever the reason, …
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Movie #19 of 2022: The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022) At 42 minutes from start to post-credits scene, this second Marvel Studios Special Presentation is…. fine. It’s fine. It’s in no way essential to any ongoing series plot, but it’s a decent check-in on the various Guardians of the Galaxy characters, I guess. …
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Movie #18 of 2022: Doctor Who: The Power of the Doctor (2022) The beginning of this latest Who special is a bit chaotic, and the whole thing moves so quickly that I feel as though we’re missing a few steps of necessary premise-setting exposition, like why the Daleks have agreed to ally themselves with the …
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Movie #17 of 2022: Werewolf by Night (2022) This is a weird one! Marvel Studios dropped the hour-long “special presentation” on Disney+ today with very little fanfare, but it is apparently an official Marvel Cinematic Universe release. I say apparently because, like the Moon Knight miniseries earlier this year, there are exactly zero explicit canonical …
Movie #14 of 2022: Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) Another Marvel feature that’s solidly entertaining in the moment but pretty disposable in the long-term franchise view. Leaning heavily on the space-rocker tone set by director Taika Waititi’s earlier Thor: Ragnarok, this sequel slides into the status of second-best Thor movie more or less by default. …
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Movie #11 of 2022: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) This is generally another fun Marvel movie, but it’s one that feels frustratingly both overstuffed and understaffed. True to its title, there is a lot of universe-hopping, yet only to realities we’ve never seen before (after Spider-Man: No Way Home, for all its …
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Movie #8 of 2022: Doctor Who: Legend of the Sea Devils (2022) I’ve been treating standalone TV events like this as movies in my reviews, but that does feel a little silly for a title that, at just 48 minutes long, is the shortest special of modern Doctor Who thus far. I liked it a …
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Movie #2 of 2022: Doctor Who: Eve of the Daleks (2022) This standalone adventure is Doctor Who at its absolute best. The premise of a steadily-shortening time loop, while not totally original, is still fairly distinctive, and is executed here with great aplomb, alternating humor with tense terror via the ticking clock of the countdown. …
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